Forum:Geisterdamen
From the Revenants page: Vrin was confirmed as a revenant by Sgt. Scorp back at Sturmhalten. --mnenyver 15:34, 1 March 2008 (UTC) :Which I never understood. The Geisterdamen don't need wasp infection to be utterly loyal to their ghoddess. It's the way they are. This strikes me as one of the -- remarkably few -- breaks in the logic of the story. -- that old bearded guy 15:48, 1 March 2008 (UTC) ::Still, logical or not, canon is canon. --Acacia 16:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC) ::*big devious grin* Exaaaaactly. Doesn't make sense to wasp a Geisterdamen, does it? There have been a few hints that there are two factions of Geisterdamen. ("She doubted your divinity!" and "There are signs she did not work alone.") --mnenyver 16:27, 1 March 2008 (UTC) :::: My odd sci-fi-fan thought was that the Geisters might have come pre-wasped... that they were symbiotic entities to start with, and the inspiration for making the wasps or even what she made them out of. We know that not being human (Jaegerkin) and even natural variations among humans (the Spark) change the way a host reacts, after all. And if it's not quite the same kind of wasp, would the weasel things know that? --Acacia 16:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC) ::::: I like this symbiosis-inspiration idea. &mdash 09:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC) ::::: Yeah, I obviously haven't gotten into the rhythm of nutty Internet theories yet, because when I saw this I just assumed my first guess was right, but now I'm reconsidering. I thought the Geisterdamen had natural revenant-like traits - i.e., they come "pre-wasped" - but that they were a little more free-willed than your average revenant, even of the inconspicuous sort. The weasel just can't tell the difference. That is, they can fight the command voice or at least are conscious of its effect on them, and aren't fully controlled by anything less than actual Lucrezia; on the other hand, revenants (I suspect) would respond equally to Agatha or Lucrezia doing the voice. I don't think I actually have any evidence for the Geisterdamen being freer-willed than revenants, but it makes sense to me, since Lucrezia seems to have actual affection for them, whereas she doesn't care at all about the revenants. Venndiagram 03:35, 27 July 2008 (UTC) ::I'm going to concede that Vrin is apparently wasp-infected, ergo, a revenant. I believe now I was mistaken about the weasels (worse, I had already had this mistake pointed out, and forgot). (However, we need a forum for the "canon is canon" question.)—Zarchne 19:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC) ::Instead of a break in the story, I take Vrin's revenant status as a clue. Possibly the Other is not the original goddess of the Geisterdamen, but an usurper. And since the original goddess was good, while the Other is evil, she needed to use the wasps. That isn't necessarily true, of course, but the Other is evil, and it makes sense that devoted worshippers of an entity would believe it to be good... and so it's perfectly reasonable for me to believe that the wasps are there to paper over some gaps. Plus, the Geisterdamen in the lower ranks can be "controlled by voice alone", which means (strongly implies, if you prefer) that Vrin is not alone as a revenant. But her mind is now too strong for her wasp. What that means I'm not ready to consider. -Quadibloc 23:02, 29 November 2008 (UTC) :::*says nothing, but just taps the end of her nose and whistles* :) --mnenyver 00:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC) ::::After I posted that, I did realize that I... overstated the situation, given the manner of her passing. But the fact that the relationship of a Geisterdamen to her wasp changes as she moves up the ladder - or, what the wasp is triggered by changes - is still something I'm not ready to address. --Quadibloc 00:45, 30 November 2008 (UTC) :::::Sorry, my answer was a little vague. What I should have said was I think you have it exactly. :) --mnenyver 07:05, 30 November 2008 (UTC) My theory is that Lucrezia and The Other are almost, but not quite, one and the same, which is why you have some Geister thinking that one is not their real goddess. It'd also explain why Vrin (and others) were infected. How this all might have gone down, I have no idea. (The hints about transdimensional harmonics? That infernal brain-imprinting machine? I've learned not to second-guess the Foglios. :p) --mnenyver 17:11, 1 March 2008 (UTC) :My theory, not necessarily mutually exclusive, is that Lucrezia was incorporated into the Other on the night of the attack. I would say they form a "hypostatic union". I'm not sure what this has to do with Vrin having/not having a wasp, though.—Zarchne 19:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC) Just because the weasels freak out about Vrin that doesn't mean she's necessarily a revenant. Just because the soldiers said she was a revenant doesn't mean she's a revenant, the soldiers certainly are not omnipotent, it just means she freaked out the weasel. The weasels were bred to find revenants because that's what the Baron was familiar with. It's not a stretch to assume that the biological constructs of the other share certain traits. Consequently it's not a jump to assume the weasels would freak out over the giant spiders, flying dragon birds, or the other constructs of the Other. Kytross 12:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC) :Right, and I can see a small variation as even less of a stretch. The theory that seems to best fit the facts is that the weasels don't detect slaver wasps or revenant infection per se, but rather "Otherness" -- not in the sense of being the Other, but rather, partaking of whatever off-plane weirdness the Geisterladies come from, where the Other is obviously important. This would make them freak when exposed to Vrin, or for that matter any other Geister, as well as the spiders, Geisterdragon, etc. Since the slaver wasps qualify as having this Otherness, the rest of the detection comes along for the ride. -- that old bearded guy 18:42, 8 August 2008 (UTC) ::This theory "feels right" to me, but there are some problems with this discussion. First and foremost, the weasels were developed to , not detect revenants; detection of revenants is a secondary effect. (Or even tertiary effect, because "wasp infected" is not necessarily completely equivalent to "revenant".) :::On the contrary, to everybody "wasp infected" equaled "shambling revenant" right until and . (I don't quite understand, which came first: finding who released wasps, or creating weasels.) 17:03, April 26, 2010 (UTC) ::To my mind, the fact that Vrin is a "revenant" is true because the proper definition of "revenant" is "servant of the Other", which is why I like the above theory. Nevertheless, it should be kept firmly in mind that it is the weasels. The fact that something "feels right" to me may just mean I'm being successfully misled. ::A consequence of this, however, is that we can be pretty sure Klaus will set a weasel off the next time one gets close enough to him, regardless of his control of his mental faculties. In theory, his efforts to be compassionate toward the infected should work in his favor; in practice I bet they backfire. :::Wow, I hadn't even thought of the fact that he would now set off his own weasels! What efforts has he been making, though? I know he has spoken of the possibility that these revenants might be saved; surely he has done some work on that. Do we have any evidence of what? (Can't go look right now, posting from work)LadyVivamus 15:03, 22 September 2008 (UTC) ::::I speculate neurosurgery would be involved, and may have already been attempted. ⚙Zarchne 21:27, 22 September 2008 (UTC) ::By the way, has anyone noted that the weasels appear to have eight legs? Probably part spider, then? Also, the detection/non-detection is usually accompanied by a sniff ("snif", "snf") which implies that smelling (or sniffing, which I've heard is a different neuropathway? ... anyway, the sense of smell) is somehow involved. ::One last question: is the "bug squad" coextensive with the "weasel crew", or does it refer to all the soldiers with the double-paired insect-wing Wulfenbach sigils? (Feel free to move these questions to a more appropriate forum or discussion page, please!) ::⚙Zarchne 22:15, 8 August 2008 (UTC) ::Perhaps there's something in the metabolism of Geisterworld creatures that smells unusuall and sets off wasp weasels? And slaver wasps were derived from some Geisterworld insect? 17:03, April 26, 2010 (UTC) :And yet, Vrin (whom the weasels marked a revenant) was able to resist Agatha's "command voice," while the other Geisters could not resist even Anevka's recorded version of it. I would figure that all the Geisters in Sturmholdt, at least, were slaver wasped, same as the townsfolk. Vrin was simply able to resist the command voice somehow, if not delivered by someone with Lucrezia's exact tone of voice and/or body language. Perhaps a different kind of wasp was used, as a hedge by The Other to keep someone else from essentially doing what Anevka tried to do. Whatever the case, Lucrezia deemed it too valuable to risk letting Baron Wulfenbach examine a living Vrin. Tatter D 22:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC) ::Don't forget that Vrin DID kneel when commanded to, then rebelled. I think the important thing here is that Vrin knew her Lady personally, being one of the priestesses who were regularly visited by the Other, and knew Anevka wasn't her. Remember, the wasps change the actual minds of the people they control, they don't just override motor functions. Since Vrin knew her Lady, she wasn't forced to obey Anevka mindlessly; or Agatha, for that matter. Since she was a revenant, however, she still had an initial, gut reaction to the command voice that Agatha later took advantage of. ::I'm pretty sure that becoming a revenant through the ingestion of a slaver wasp would be considered a holy act of obedience to the Geisterdaimen, not a hellish existence of eternal servitude, as it would seem to humans who undergo the experience.--Dreast 20:09, 24 March 2009 (UTC) :::That's actually a fairly good point, and it explains why Vrin's admission ("I believe the ignorant call them 'slaver wasps.'") was delivered the way it was. Another interesting thing is that we've never actually seen any of the old-style revenants that showed any sign of having once been female. The Sturmholdt revenants were a new style of revenant, presumably developed by Prince Sturmvoraus after Lucrezia's disappearance, so perhaps the older style created by The Other had the side effect of turning infected men into revenants and infected women into Geisterdamen. Same loyalty, but a very marked difference in appearance and capabilities, one that would naturally lead the Geisters to develop a belief in their own superiority, as long as they did not question whether the wasps were actually designed to do this in the first place. --Tatter D 19:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC) About the issue of the Geisterdamen already being loyal due to their religion, therefore not needing infection; Lucrezia was a devious bitch, and could have used their devotion to manipulate them into taking wasps, so that even in the slim chance of rebellion, she could still control them. A loyalty fail-safe as it were.--Necrotas 06:09, February 18, 2010 (UTC) :We DO know of . Which means no wasps. Than again, Vrin may have made wasps obligatory after that. 17:03, April 26, 2010 (UTC)